Is headspace making a difference to young people’s lives?

3. Access and Engagement with Centres
The stigma of mental illness
The most frequently identified service barrier mentioned was the stigma associated with mental
health problems and the inaccurate representations of people with mental disorders. Young people
frequently described their initial reluctance to attend headspace centres because they themselves
believed– or feared others saying– that this meant that they would be considered ‘crazy, psychotic
or anything like that’. For some young people who attended headspace, this meant that they were
careful about disclosing their help seeking:
If someone said, “Oh, why can’t we catch up?” You said, “Oh, because I’ve got a headspace
appointment.” They’d be, like, “What’s wrong? What’s going on with you?” People would be
all nosy and then people would, like, mock you for being depressed and stuff like that.
(Female, 14 years)
One participant felt that the stigma issue was greater for young people in small towns where they
could be recognised when entering headspace offices. She felt that this was probably less of an
issue for young people in urban centres, which afforded greater anonymity.
Wait times for service
Evaluation data identified wait times as a barrier to service engagement. Not surprisingly, young
people who expected to immediately access services mentioned this issue:
The waiting period was a little bit longer than I expected, but I know that that does happen;
services do have long waiting lists, and unfortunately in positions like mine, it does make it a
little bit hard to think well, you know, considering I’ve got to wait this long, is it really worth it
and is it going to help? (Female, 19 years)
The only bad thing was, is it took so long to actually see a psychologist. It took I think around
about three months … 23 (Female, 25 years)
While this last quote specifies an excessively long wait time, hCSA data indicates that the majority of
young people did not wait long to access services. At every occasion of service, clients are asked ‘do
you feel you had to wait too long to get this appointment?’. In the 2013/14 financial year, more than
90% of respondents answered ‘no’ to this question.
At each occasion of service, clients are also asked ‘how long have you waited for this appointment
(from when you or someone else tried to make an appointment for you)?’ Because of this method
of data collection, mean wait times are not able to be calculated; however, results for specified wait
times at any point in the services young people receive are provided in Table 3.4 below.
Table 3.4 Wait times for headspace clients, 2013-14 financial year
Appointment wait times Freq. Per cent
Less than 3 days 25,163 12.91
Between 3 and 6 days 24,779 12.71
1 - 2 weeks 73,000 37.44
3 - 4 weeks 23,525 12.07
More than 4 weeks 7,540 3.87
I don't know 15,552 7.98
missing 25,409 13.03
Total 194,968 100
Source: Authors calculations from hCSA data.
Results indicate that a little more than a quarter of clients waited less than a week for services, and
almost two-thirds of clients waited less than two weeks.
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This appears to be rather unusual in that less than 4% of clients recorded waiting times of more than 4 weeks in the
hCSA.
Social Policy Research Centre 2015
headspace Evaluation Final Report
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